


Still that fiery spit of hope

by supremperor



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24923701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supremperor/pseuds/supremperor
Summary: Rey journeys inward as the suns set on Tatooine.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Still that fiery spit of hope

Still that fiery spit of hope

“Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity. The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.”

—Rumi

A loner dressed in white stood against twin suns.

This was once the heart for heroes of myth; a realm of childhood replete with rural aspirations and burgeoning anticipation of adventures to come. Since, it has become a tomb for storied swords and for a scavenger with all her year ahead and all her life behind. 

_What did you expect to find here, in this place so far from me? Was it misery? No. That’s never been you. So why did you come here?_

She’d put his voice to all her thoughts; made her inner monologue his own, final refuge. Here, within the confines of Rey’s skull, Ben was safe--protected from all those who had seen him only as a shadow. No one would ever use him or torment him or misunderstand him ever again.

But he could never touch or taste or love. To quell his suffering, the Force had stricken all pleasure from his being till now he existed only as a phantom at Rey’s shoulder--one she could almost feel in the form of a hefty hand and digging fingers.

With a trembling chill, Rey reached across her chest. All the blistering might of the twin suns couldn’t stifle the shiver down her limbs as she lowered her hand toward his and, for a moment as fleeting as a blink, met his flesh between her palm and shoulder.

He was there. Just the shape of him, of harsh knuckles and the soft, warm skin stretched between. Silent, without a pulse or tremor to him, and yet solid and clearly Ben.

Then he wasn’t. Gone. Torn away as quickly and traumatically as he’d come into her life just a year past--a year they’d spent at tooth-and-nail odds, each driven mad and frenzied with frustration by a desperate urge to lend a voice to some inexplicable yearning within themselves.

And still, those were Rey’s most cherished days. When she felt _alive._ Now there was no desire to keep her fire burning.

_So you came here to give up?_

“I belong here,” she said to the setting suns, gritting her teeth as she fought against the tide of bitter tears and seething, undirected contempt. She’d felt this way before--torn apart as she’d been that last night on Luke’s island, when Ben had laid bare her greatest weakness. Each night, when the suns were gone, his voice returned with the stars.

_You can’t stop needing me, can you? You’ve searched everywhere. First in the Resistance, now in a name._

Rey’s hand fell to her hip where it formed a fist beside her lightsaber. 

_But still, that same wound and nothing left to fill it._

Rey ignited the spitting blade and sawed at the shadow behind her back.

All she’d cleaved was air and dust.

Beebee-Ate stirred from stasis in the charred homestead and beeped in trepidatious concern.

“I’m okay,” she said, though the beebee unit was hardly convinced. “Just go back to sleep. Please.”

Beebee-Ate, acutely aware of Rey’s need for a companionship that he could not offer, hung his head and returned to the shelter’s confines with a long, slow sigh of a beep.

Rey had watched him go and now held her crackling saber to the stars, its rancorous hum at once a cruel reminder and a cherished vestige of Ben’s own kyber crystal.

She’d thought to bleed it, to let the last droplets of darkness from his veins before she came to this barren place, but something had stopped her halfway--some part of herself she couldn’t let go of. No, Ben’s crystal wasn’t shattered or broken beyond repair. Just scared and hurting, with a wound of its own. Still, the Jedi scripture commanded Rey to purge all darkness and seal the crystal’s crack so that the kyber may be absolved of agony and remorse. But how could she? This was Ben’s _heart_. And now it belonged to Rey; damaged, loud and beautiful as it was.

She retracted the blade and dipped her chin to her collarbone.

Fate had never been fair to Rey. She’d made her own luck at every step until the path forward fell out beneath her and discarded her _here_. At the furthest place from the bright center of the universe.

The Force had afforded her no time to say goodbye or even come to terms with the loss of her other half. No one would blame her if she lamented the cruel nature of fate and exiled herself to the reclusive comfort of self-pity.

But that wasn't Rey.

Rey was never a victim.

Victims don’t make sustenance out of scrap metal and they certainly don’t take a staff to the head of Luke Skywalker or a swing at the Supreme Leader.

No, Rey was never one to give in or let go and she wasn’t going to start now. As a Jedi it had been her deepest flaw--she’d clung to the irrational hope that her parents would come back for her; kept her hair in buns and waited in a desert for half her twenty years all because she refused to accept the truth. Then she found the light in Kylo Ren and for once she had a new belonging to cling to--someone who would hold on as tight and ravenously as she would and never let go.

“I know why I’m here,” she said to the kyber crystal.

First Han, now Luke and Leia were buried too.

Rey clipped the saber to her belt, reached both hands behind her head and unwound the binds from her hair, allowing it to fall loose and free in the Tatooine breeze.

Fate took everything from Rey and she demanded nothing in return. For as long as she could remember, Rey kept her head down and kept moving forward. Now, there was nothing on the cold horizon. She had to come here, to the shackled wasteland of youth, to see that.

With no new hope ahead, and only that fiery spit alive inside of her, Rey had one place to go: to a realm beyond right or wrong, past the veil of sand and stars, where love can defy the chains of death.

Out there, in Elsewhere, Ben is waiting.


End file.
